The Fixer Upper House and Garden

The Fixer Upper Garden

One of the things that really motivated me to buy T.F.U.H. 20 months ago was that it needs a total landscaping overhaul, and I really love to toil in the garden. My green thumb is going to come in handy, because the front evergreens are so dense and overgrown that five children can simultaneously lay on top of them without even bending the branches. The side garden is a barren mudslick and the backyard is so bereft of plants it looks as if a bomb went off. The property endured decades of benign neglect from the P.O.s and nine months of cataclysmic assaults from us: The demolition of the old addition, the digging of a new basement, the building of a new addition and the installation of a storm drain all have detonated the property. There's nothing left but rocks, scrappy trees and hard, clay soil...I can hardly wait to get started!

This is the future bluestone patio:

Some New Pics

Here are some recent photos. It's hard to keep up with all the action! The photo below shows the new roof and the new (primed but not yet painted) beadboard soffit at one corner of the new addition.

Don't you just love a full dumpster? It's even better watching it get hauled away.

I got a very creepy vibe from the guy who installed the fireplace this week. When he first arrived, he sprang from his truck, asked me my name, whether my dogs were friendly and could he have some water. When I said yes I'd get him some water but no my small dog is not friendly, he sprang back into his truck and retrieved his girlfriend and their puppy, who wound up spending most of the afternoon on the front lawn; she even raked the leaves. I gave them each a LaCroix and then, later in the day, strong coffee (they looked a little fried). But I lost compassion when the girl lit up a cigarette in front of my kids, and I kind of felt like they were eyeing my purse. The good news is these bad vibes will most certainly get burned to ash the first time we operate the fireplace (assuming the fireplace is operational!) It's a good thing he was installing the firepalce and not the tile. ... By the way, this is a pre-fab, wood-burning fireplace. It's not a beautiful masonry fireplace, nor is it an eco-friendly wood burning fireplace. Sadly, neither was in our price range.

 

Narrow Passage

In the backyard of the east side of our house, there's a narrow alley that no one but the dogs ever enters. The dogs love it because they can run at full speed, barking, to meet the neighbor's golden retriever where the fence ends; kind of like going to confession without the dark chamber.  I was thinking of training them to use this space as a latrine, but I feel lucky enough that they "go" outside to begin with (and not in the house). So we've pretty much overlooked this narrow passage as we work on plans for the addition.

Then our architect, the wonderful Miguel, came up with an idea to use this space as a little courtyard adjacent to what will become the eating-area of the kitchen. French doors will open onto a small patio made of (affordable) stone, with a path leading to a somewhat larger patio with a table in the back yard. Poof! Something comes from nothing but a good idea. Now I'm envisioning blooming vines trailing up the fence, pots of herbs, and a wicker chair with a comfy cushion.

A Clean Sweep

The cleaning ladies took one look at my house and said "No ma'am. We can no do this house." Desperate for help in taming the dog-hair monster that is growing beneath my sofas, I begged them to stay. The one who speaks English...the Alpha Cleaning Lady....insisted "No ma'am can do. No time Ma'am."

"What will it take?" said I, feeling the perspiration soak through a gap t-shirt, grey turtleneck and black zip-front cardigan, necessary armor for a frigid spring-less April day. "How much do you want?"

"130 dollar," said the lady with the vaccume as she eyed the toys that were scattered on every available surface in the living room: tiny wigs from playmobil soldiers; stockings and shoes for barbie's wedding; world map puzzle pieces; magnetic tinker logs; an expensive nintendo ds cartridge....etc..... "And no do kids rooms. No time."

"But I can clean the whole house in less than 2 hours by myself!" I said, revealing how low my standards of cleanliness have sunk (as if the house in its present state was not enough proof).

"130 dollar," she said with the authority of a locksmith.

I caved. I was desperate. Besides, she was taunting me with that vaccume.

By the next day, you couldn't tell they'd been here.

The Grass Is Never Greener

Crosuses are poking out of the garden like Fruit Loops on a brownie and the grass has turned from grey to a blindingly bright green. The calendar says it's spring and the robins do sound convincing. Then why is the weatherman forecasting snow?

Yesterday we returned from a week-plus trip to the East Coast visiting dear friends, relatives and a certain long-dead pharoah whose belongings are on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. I thought the time away from dogs and Dutch Colonial would do me good. But when we returned to our little suburb on the lake, my energy for what lies ahead began to sink like wet paws in a muddy ravine. The furnace broke when we were away and the house was 55 degrees when we returned on Sunday--it was warmer on the front lawn, where we had our morning coffee. Thank you, Modern Heating Co., for taking calls on weekends.

Along with colorful bulbs and unpredictable weather, the spring real estate season has arrived. "For Sale" signs are as varied and abundant as hostas and it makes me wonder: Should we have bought a different house? Or not moved at all? Or rented until we had things figured out? These are moot points, I know. For tonight we shall meet with Miguel, our new best friend and architect, and I must focus on the positives.  We are very near the end of the planning-phase. Soon this journey will take us in three new directions: construction drawings, permit applications and bidding out the job. Then I will get to embark on the fourth and most fun prong: obsessing over counter top materials, toilet brands and whether I have the courage to utilize linoleum.

It would have been so much easier to buy a newer house. But then, the grass is never really greener on the otherside, is it?

Pictures instead of words

It was a warm and windy day and the kids played outside for hours after school. Whoever decided to up Daylight Savings Time is not a mother. Mothers need that extra hour of darkness in the evening to get the little ones to settle down. The big ones, too. But today, oh you bright, warm, springish day, was nice. It looked like the air and trees had been scrubbed with Windex; like the world had gone through a massive car wash (except for the gooey mud all over the patchy lawn).

Here is a photo of the rear of the house. That flat-roofed room was added in 1961; the previous owner referred to it as "the new addition" when she sold us the house last fall. We plan to take this down and dig a new basement (smileyface,smileyface,smileyface; winkwink). The first floor will have a family room, mud room and new kitchen added on. The second floor will get a master bedroom/bath and possibly a study. It sounds like a lot and it will cost a lot, but it will be modest on account of the fact that our garage has a secret room upstairs.

In this shot, Milo is standing on a deck of sorts.  This is where the new kitchen/mud room will be built. See the bare trees across the street? In the mornings I sometimes see a Cooper's Owl perched on the branches.

Alpha Mother Dog

When my friend Sandy put an addition onto her house a few years ago, tradesmen filled her personal space for nine months. What started in the fall inched like holiday traffic through winter and into spring.

"How can you stand this?" I asked her one rainy night as she scrubbed the imprint of a boot off her butcher-block counter.

Sandy pointed to a plate of fresh brownies and asked if I'd like to have a few. "Oh I don't know," she said calmly, as if a cleaning lady had just left her house in perfect order. "The guys are friendly, and mostly they're in the family room and bedroom."

Some people handle stress better than others.

For seven months I've often felt strangled by the stress of moving, selling, buying and planning the renovation of an older house. Lately I've been doing better, but in moments of high anxiety I still feel I can't breathe in enough air. Last week when I learned about the architect's miscalculations, it felt like my lungs filled up with Drano.

So I took a few deep breaths and tried to channel Sandy. When that didn't work, I reached for my First Communion rosary, which was somewhere on my messy desk. When I couldn't find that, I called my husband but his caller ID can somehow sense if I'm in a good mood...or not. No luck there. So I turned to Plan D: I called a dog trainer.

When you can't control your life, at least control your dog. Milo weighs 20 pounds and is as cute as...well, as cute as a puppy. But since we moved he has been channeling my stress and translating it into his own personal hybrid of fear-aggression and canine obnoxiousness. When another dog walks past our house, he barks as if the Taliban were coming. When he's on a leash and passes a dog, he lunges with his sharp, pinchy teeth for all to see. I can't let him out alone and I can't walk with him, either. I fear my new neighbors will seek our eviction. And we haven't even applied for permits yet.

Jeff is an old school dog trainer who shows border collies for discipline and trains dogs and owners in their homes. He came to our house on Saturday morning when my little nieces and nephew were running with my children and our neighbor's kids were ringing the bell and the new architect stopped by with a roll of drawings. Between the disruptions, Jeff, husband, dogs and I sat on chewed blue couches and talked about my...I mean Milo's...problems.

And Jeff said: "I can see you have a lot going on."

Finally someone who sees what I'm up against!

He told me to take control: to get a crate and make Milo sleep in it instead of snuggled against my legs in bed. He got out a scary-looking but humane prong collar--the kind you see on pit bulls and dogs as big as Marmaduke--and wrapped it around Milo's scrappy little neck. Milo sat. He lay down. He shut up. He shivered, too, sensing the new order approaching like a college graduation.

Milo doesn't know his rank and that makes him nervous and territorial, Jeff said. We can control his behaviour by clear and consistent training, which we're supposed to have fun doing. It's a chore (which is why I've avoided doing it) but is working pretty well so far. I just have to keep acting like the Alpha mother dog.

There's another word for that, but I've got too much control over my temper to use it.

Bearing Fruit

Once when I was 10 weeks pregnant, I ate a pineapple while standing at my kitchen sink. The next day, I had a miscarriage.

My obstetrician tried to convince me not to blame the fruit or myself for eating so much of it in one sitting...er, standing. But even after 10 years and two more (wonderfully healthy) babies, I'm still suspicious of the pineapple.  To me, its thorny crown and sweet interior will always seem duplicitous.

Cause-and-effect relationships are on my mind these days, as I search for blame regarding the situation with my house. The connection is not as clear--or as coincidental--as gorging on fresh pineapple one day/violent cramping the next. But accountability is in order.

Let us examine the evidence:

Exhibit A: Ralph, a well respected 50-ish architect; runs local design/build firm; highly recommended by our realtor; sits on village historical commission. This latter point tipped the balance in his favor when we were interviewing architects; we thought it would help to have an architect who knows the village's archaic zoning codes.

Exhibit B: Me, for trusting Exhibit A to do his homework.

Yesterday I received a call from Village Hall saying our addition's allowable square footage is half of what Ralph calculated. Ralph said we could add 1,600 square feet and spent four months working on schematic drawings with that in mind. The Village has now laid down the gauntlet at a mere 800 square feet. I won't bore you with the details about why and how, but I will say there is more evidence against the charming two-story, detached garage than there was against the pineapple.

Of course, it's no longer Ralph's problem; I fired him last week before I even knew about this grievous miscalculation. When Miguel, our new architect, looked at the drawings, the square-footage issue was a red flag as obvious as a bloody nose. That's why we had the village development office come out to verify, or in this case, vilify it.

I wonder if pineapple will stain the finish on a lexus?

Like Giving Birth

Forty-five minutes before my last child was born, I sat in a wheelchair in a delivery room at Princeton Medical Center and announced to a nurse: "I don't want to do this."

It was not that I did not want to have the baby; I did. I just did not want to go through the process of getting the baby out of my body. Because I knew I was too far gone to get drugs; I knew there was no time left for the medical and pharmaceutical industries to save me from the future. My water had broken shortly before, during an 11 p.m. news account of a hurricane in S. America, and right away the contractions came so fast I could not catch my breath. As my husband drove by open fields where grey sheep grazed in the morning and then past columned homes that were outnumbering the sheep, I admonished him to "PLEASE STOP GOING OVER BUMPS."

We could have adopted. I could have demanded a C section (though no OB would have agreed to give me one). I could have held my breath and refused to budge until an anesthesiologist arrived with a needle as long as a labrador's tail. Then the nurse informed me that even if I had more time, the anesthesiologist would not arrive before the baby crowned. There would be no long needle, truly. The anesthesiologist was at home, sleeping.

If we had adopted that collie, would we have wanted another child?

The nurse helped me take off my clothes and as she tied the strings of a thread-bare gown around my neck, the baby's head dropped into my pelvis and a pregnant OB I had never met entered the room, snapping on latex gloves like a condom in a sex-ed class. And I yelled: "Why does this hospital have only one anesthesiologist?"

The baby came then, a sleepy girl with black hair and blueberry-colored eyes.

                                                        ..............

I am done having babies now, but today as I await the final drawings on my house I have the same feeling I had nearly seven years ago in the wheelchair before a delivery bed at Princeton Medical Center: I don't want to do this. I don't want to live here while a hole deeper than a grave is dug in the backyard; don't want fine dust to line my cereal bowl in the mornings; don't want to live amongst the tradesmen; to duck through a gap in large plastic sheets taped tightly to interior walls. I don't want to buy tile, shop for counters; design a mantel. I would like to live in the house when it is finished. I just don't want to go through the labor to get there.

Beannie Weanies

Many years ago I met a woman whose job it was to manage Beannie Weanies. She worked for a consumer products company that I think was Quaker Oats, but I'm no longer sure. I don't remember her name or even how I came to meet her; though I think it had something to do with my brother-in-law's wedding. He's been married for 15 years, so this anecdote is very dated. But lately I've been thinking about the Beanie-Weannie lady a lot.

We were at a party--or wedding--and standing in a group of people whom all seemed to be MBAs with important jobs that required exotic travel and expensive clothes. I was at that time an editor at a trade magazine and was hoping as we stood by the wine bar that no one would ask me what I did for a living. Then a woman announced she was the marketing manager for Beannie Weannies. And do you know--someone actually giggled. "Did you say Beannie Weannies," said a guy in a yellow tie, gagging as if he'd just swallowed one. Yes, the woman replied confidentally. "Don't knock Beannie Weannies."

What she meant was that Beannie Weannies, though small and undramatic, were a cash cow. Neither she nor her company had to work hard to sell these dimunitive  dogs but they had steady demand and made a lot of money anyway. The Beannie Weannie is what it is.

And the reason that I've been thinking about this line is that---so is my house. It is what it is.

When you buy a house with a mind to renovate it, the possibilities seem endless. If we tear down this wall we'll gain that space and if we use that room for a different purpose we'll have more room to....blah-dee-dah. You get sort of a rush from the power of correcting 82-year-old mistakes and imagining how fantastic life is going to be in the newer, bigger space.

But now that we're on draft 5--the final glorious draft--I've realized that this house, like the Beannie Weannie, is what it is. And that is OK. The kids rooms are too small; the pantry is going to be too big; the dining room, used only at night, is the sunniest room in the house. It is not perfect. It is undramatic. Men in yellow ties will not want to live here. But it will work.